Scaling a fitness business can be tricky—and now, more than ever, fitness professionals are forced to learn new skills as they shift their focus toward on-demand video and mobile apps. Online training is here to stay, and it’s never been more important to stand out amongst peers and competition.
Long before COVID-19, the earliest fitness “influencers” made waves by selling PDFs on their website. However, as time has gone on, consumer expectations for digital fitness have reached all-time highs since consumers and clients are accustomed to digesting high-quality fitness content all day via various social media platforms. Big brands like Apple, Equinox, and Peloton have built their own apps, and dozens of independent fitness creators have taken the leap by launching their own personalized fitness apps.
While Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are amazing highlight reels and promotion tools, they lack direct payment and eCommerce capabilities, which is why trainers with their own fitness apps have a huge headstart in building a solid business moving forward. It’s clear that those who continue to sell PDFs are providing a mediocre product, and are at risk of losing customers if they don’t adapt and compete.
Indie fitness creators are building the future
Interacting directly with customers through your own branded app is an immense upgrade compared to selling a downloadable PDF.
April Whitney is doing just this. April is a successful fitness creator and founder of Smalletics, an online fitness community for petite women. April’s two products generate over $30k a month (one product is a one-time 12-week program, and the other is a more affordable monthly membership). When COVID-19 first hit mainstream in March 2020, April shifted all of her content from a clickable PDF to an interactive mobile app.
April’s products are now entirely visual, video-based, and interactive.
Monthly membership with integrated paywall
Interactive workout experience with videos
April’s goal was to stand out better amongst competition, retain existing customers, and grow her community by elevating her product into a mobile app. Smalletics has seen a 50% increase year over year in sales since migrating her content from a PDF and website to an interactive and fully branded mobile app. By offering a better product, it allowed her to scale and unlocked a more premium way of delivering value to her audience and superfans.
Although creating your own app may sound daunting, it’s now easier than ever due to an explosion of new creator tools and platforms that have emerged for fitness creators during COVID-19.
Here are a few benefits of creating your own fitness app:
- Offer a beautiful, visual, and engaging experience
- Protect your content and products under a paywall
- Productize your programs however you’d like
- Manage/accept payments directly within Superset
- Stay on-brand with complete creative freedom
- Edit or add new exercises/workouts at any time
- Train hundreds of people with just one program
In conclusion, the digital fitness market has quickly shifted toward an entirely new landscape. With digital fitness brands growing larger by the day, it’s important that trainers position themselves to compete head-on, and evolve alongside new consumer behaviors. PDFs gained popularity within online training because they are easy to create and sell—especially at scale with one downloadable link. But now, it’s easier than ever to bring your training online and create, distribute, and deliver fitness content (at scale) by creating your own fitness app.
If you’re lost on where to start, we can help.
